Tag: March Comes in Like a Lion

I plan my seasonal anime choices by referring to Anichart, and based on the blurb there I assumed this would have some similarities with Ping Pong: The Animation — that it would be a sports anime that also dealt with social isolation and mental health issues. It turns out to be the opposite; March Comes in Like a Lion is an anime about crushing depression first and foremost, and shogi is very much secondary to that. (I should have noticed that they’d tagged it Drama and Slice of Life, but not Sports.)

Why don’t you ever wanna play?I’m tired of this piece of string.You sleep as much as I do now,And you don’t eat much of anything.— The Weakerthans, Plea from a Cat Named Virtute

It’s been quite upsetting to see so many anime fans respond to Lion‘s depiction of depression by saying, “Wow, that’s exactly how I felt.” I’m in the same boat. I’ve suffered two bouts of depression in my life, and the sense of unmotivation, of crushing obligation, of wanting to hide even from the people who make you happy, of wanting to just disappear… all of that is here, and it’s hauntingly accurate.

In Lion, shogi is almost a McGuffin. It’s something that Rei clung to in dealing with his difficult family situation, his grief, and his loneliness; it’s also something that contributes to his isolation by allowing him to live alone and cut ties with his support networks. The fact that it’s shogi is almost completely irrelevant. What actually matters is the efforts of various people (friends, family, mentors, opponents, teachers) to draw Rei out of his depression and into a more normal life and happier frame of mind.

By way of background, this episode of NHK World’s Japanology Plus on Shogi gives a brief overview of the rules, but also a window into the lives of professional shogi players: groomed as children, prodigies are identified because they start beating adult players; spending their time between matches reviewing the data from their competitors’ matches, they are constantly trying to find new strategies; matches are physically exhausting and can last days at a time. All of this is reflected in March, which is interesting. I wasn’t sure how true to life it was, and how much was exaggerated for the manga/anime drama. It actually seems to be a fairly plausible story.